Fall 2023

Midwives Roji Djiba, Julianna Diatta, Mai Sagna, Jill Padgham-Diallo (a Carmel native) and Amie Ndiaye work in the birth center that Padgham-Diallo’s nonprofit created. B orn and raised in Carmel, licensed midwife Jill Padgham-Diallo visited Senegal 15 years ago during a volunteer trip with other midwives and almost instantly found her true calling. “I kept coming back,” Padgham-Diallo shares. “For six years I worked in a government-run mater- nity clinic in a very rural village. The culture is totally indigenous with a lot of the women not having bank accounts or knowing how to read or write.” Women also lacked access to contraception, prenatal care and safe places for labor and delivery. The brutality of women giving birth in a run- down facility, with providers often reusing gloves and lacking lifesaving medical supplies shocked Padgham-Diallo. Many women were having up to eight children, starting as young teens, and often dying or suffering greatly from childbirth. With the help of local midwives and others, Padgham-Diallo founded the nonprofit Senegal Health Institute. “We needed to create something new that was going to influence the entire area,” she says. The nonprofit launched a mentoring pro - gram for adolescent girls, a scholarship fund for a midwifery program, and created an education- al center, a women’s health and family clinic and a birth center. “We are now Ministry of Health approved,” she says. “It’s taken a lot of perseverance, with these wonderful local midwives saying, ‘We can do this.’” For more information, visit www.senegalhealth. org or call 831/585-2034. The Passport to Senegal Gala takes place on October 7 at Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Carmel Valley. Proceeds from the event benefit women and girls in West Africa. Senegal Midwifer y Program is a True Labor of Love B Y B R E T T WI L BUR SHORT CUTS GIVING BACK 82 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • F A L L 2 0 2 3 Photo: Elliot Petenbrink